At the end of May, Peace Now reported that 30,000 Israelis (above) raised their voices against 50 years of occupation and in support of a two state solution.

Peace Now is a movement of Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens who see the pursuit of peace, compromise and reconciliation with the Palestinians on the one hand and with the Arab states on the other, as necessary to guarantee Israel’s future security and its identity as a state.

30,000 Jews and Arabs, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, old and young, arrived from all across Israel to show that many support a two state solution, oppose the government’s policies and seek to end the occupation, which is hurting Palestinians and deteriorating Israel’s democracy.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in Jewish-only colonies, which are deemed illegal by international law, throughout occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.

However, two months later, there was an incident at Abu Rajabs’ family home, in the southern occupied West Bank, raising tensions in the city. The clearest account is given by IMEMC News here.

In 2012, Israeli settler colonizers took over the top two floors of the home, forcing the Abu Rajab family to huddle into the lowest level of their home. The home has been the subject of a long-standing legal case, with settlers claiming that they legally purchased the property. The Abu Rajab family rejects that claim, and Israel’s civil administration has said the settlers have been unable to provide proof of that purchase.

Since that time, the Abu Rajab family has been continually harassed, including having their entrance and exit to the home blocked, being beaten and threatened, having soldiers occupy their home and assist the settler colonizers in their takeover, and having one of the sons of the Abu Rajab family abducted and put into prison without charge for years. Throughout 2015, Israeli settlers camped outside the home for months, harassing the Abu Rajab family and preventing them from leaving.

This video shows one altercation, but it is unclear what is happening. The most disturbunig shots were of a large crowd of y oung israels repeatedly calpp9ng and cheering..

IMEMC News reports that the family had filed six different complaints with the Israeli court system, which eventually ruled in their favour and ordered the settlers to evacuate.

343 university lecturers in subjects including chemistry, mathematics and political science, from 72 institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge, the LSE and University College London are to boycott Israeli universities in protest at their “deep complicity” in their government’s “violations of international law”.

Making their boycott in an individual capacity, they said that they would not accept invitations for academic visits to Israel or co-operate with Israeli universities in any way because they were “deeply disturbed by Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land”.

They also accused the Israeli government of “intolerable human rights violations that it inflicts on all sections of the Palestinian people, and its apparent determination to resist any feasible settlement”.

“Speaking on behalf of the signatories, Jonathan Rosenhead, from the LSE, said that Israeli universities were “at the heart of Israel’s violations of international law and oppression of the Palestinian people . . . Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians has led tens of thousands of Palestinians to take to the streets in mass protest”. In the Guardian he added: He said: “These signatures were all collected despite the pressures that can be put on people not to criticise the state of Israel. Now that the invitation to join the commitment is in the public domain, we anticipate many more to join us.

“Rachel Cohen, an employment expert and senior lecturer at City University, said that the Israeli state presented itself as an “enlightened funder of academic pursuits yet it systematically denies Palestinian academics and students their basic freedoms, such as the freedom of movement necessary to attend international academic conferences, or simply to get to lectures on time.”

“Other signatories include the philosopher Ted Honderich, professor emeritus of the philosophy of mind and logic at University College London, and Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the LSE”.

Ms Bennett reports that Richard Verber, senior vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, questioned why academics were singling out Israel “in such a discriminatory fashion”. He told Jewish News: “At a time of immense, often barbaric upheaval in other parts of the Middle East, Israel remains a beacon of academic excellence and progressive thinking.”

But readers of this website could remind him of wholesale acts of barbarism, carried out by Israeli settlers and government- sanctioned military action.